Rescuers live with memories - Many didn't seek help in dealing with stress
Diane Plumberg
04/16/2000
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Terry Yeakey restored many families that day.
The 30-year-old police sergeant crawled over piles of crushed concrete and furniture as electrical wires sparked overhead. He saved Richard Williams, Randy Ledger, Tom Hall and a woman he only knew by her injuries.
Not long after the bombing, a friend, Romona McDonald, said Yeakey wrote her about his problems.
"I think my days as a police officer are numbered," the letter stated. "I think there is a lot of secrets floating around now about my mental state of mind. I believe that a lot of the problems the officers are having right now are because some of them know what really happened and can't deal with it."
In May 1996, Yeakey was found in a grassy field near a grove of trees in El Reno, where Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols had been held in a federal prison. He had slit his wrists and neck and shot himself in the head. Yeakey is buried next to his mother in an El Reno cemetery. He left behind two young daughters, who are now 8 and 6.
Police Sgt. Jerry Flowers said, "You learn to live with it."